Menu

Cinema as Deep Map: Patience (After Sebald) and cinematic cartography

Screenshot from documentary by Grant Gee (2011)

“Mapping Out Patience: Cinema, Cartography and W.G. Sebald,” an essay by Taien Ng-Chan, was first presented at the 26th International Cartographic Conference in Dresden, Germany, in 2013, and was published recently in the journal Humanities, in a special “Deep Mapping” issue edited by Les Roberts. As described in the abstract: “cinematic cartography can be an especially powerful tool for deep mapping, as it can convey the narratives, emotions, memories and histories, as well as the locations and geography that are associated with a place. This is evident in the documentary film Patience (After Sebald) by Grant Gee, which follows in the footsteps of W.G. Sebald and his walking tour of Suffolk, England, as described in his book The Rings of Saturn. A variety of strategies in cinematic cartography are used quite consciously in Gee’s exploration of space, place and story.” It can be downloaded at http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/4/4/554

Other papers in this very interesting special issue include “Mapping Deeply” by Denis Wood, “The Rhythm of Non-Places: Marooning the Embodied Self in Depthless Space” by Les Roberts, and “Regular Routes: Deep Mapping a Performative Counterpractice for the Daily Commute” by Laura Bissell and David Overend. Full details are here: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/DeepMapping